[granite1]

I'm not saying the things that the mother may have done to me wasn't horrific but was it traumatic? i have always hated when this T uses the words trauma, flashbacks,dissociating,etc... no other T ever has and i find these words hard to hear and often don't feel that they pertain to me at all.i never really knew anything else.this was how it was.it wasn't like i lived some normal life and then was abused by someone and had that all taken away from me.yes i can completely see that as being traumatic.but ME? i knew nothing different.truly it wasn't until Jr high when i decided to talk to some kids and hang out with them that i realized that not everything was like the way things were for me. i hung out with friends who's mother taught them how to use makeup,these girls thought it was crazy for the mother to hit me the way she did.and amazed about me having sex. .i swear i was the only girl in school who had sex but had no idea what my period was.i had no idea what sex was until it was explained to me by these girls.it is kind of hard to explain.the babysitter never used sex words.it was a game that i couldn't tell anyone about.when i was younger.and i didn't.it wasn't until i started hanging out with these girls did i learn it was wrong and it was me who was wrong when i talked about it at all to them i was met with gross you did that etc...i didn't know it was so bad.i kind of thought it was cool i knew what they were talking about.any way.what i am saying is if you don't know it is suppose to be traumatic or bad or wrong .how can it be.i feel sometimes it was more traumatic to see how other people saw it then me.peoples reaction was more traumatic than my life.i don't know if i am making any sense here just thoughts going through my stupid head

[Butterflywingz]

Hi Granite,

Usually what T's mean when they say something from childhood is traumatic, is the way in which things may have affected you unconsciously, and psychically. Although you may not have seen your experiences as traumatic when you were younger, the effects of having experienced such things stays with us deep within our minds, thus having an impact on us when we are older. This could be through behaviours, or through illnesses, or thought the way we may connect (or not) with others.

The mere fact that you mentioned dissociating, and that your T has mentioned it, could suggest that you are in fact more affected by things then you are consciously aware of. If that makes sense. As you get more involved with your therapy you will learn more about this, and more about you.

I hope this has given you an idea in what your T means. All the best

Hi Granite.

I'm still feeling a little low today so hope what I say is helpful in some way. The example I'm going to use is in no way meant to be comparative to what you went through but to show I understand the thoughts...

When I was little we were very poor... I lived in a suburban community where most of my friends lived in a 3 bedroom split colonial in a housing development. They had nice clothes and a mom who stayed home and it was like the Brady Bunch... There were 6 kids in my family...we never had enough money for heat to be on very high so I slept in my coat in a sleeping bag... we never had enough food....we had a bad leak in the roof which we got fixed but then my dad gutted the room down to the studs to get rid of the damage but ran out of money before he could repair room...so we lived for the rest of my time at home with a gutted bedroom upstairs that no one lived in and my parents slept on sofas in living room...

When I was little that was normal...I didn't think we were poor that was just how we lived but then when I was like 10 or so and I started going to slumber parties and sleep overs... I realized that other people didn't live like that... and when I would talk about life at my home... it was the reactions that were difficult.... It was from their reactions that I felt shame... I never invited anyone over to my house...

trauma is defined as an experience that produces psychological injury or pain. I have dissociated amnesia from a lot of my childhood (lots more going on in that house than being poor) So did that experience of my childhood not cause trauma because I didn't remember it... Do we have to consciously interpret trauma as trauma in order for it to qualify as such? Or is the experience whether it was CSA or physical abuse qualify as trauma regardless of how interpretted by the victim? I think the latter is such...

But the shame was not yours and unfortunately your jr high friends did not have enough life experience to tell you that it wasn't you who was bad but the person who did that to you...

no...it was normal for you...how would you have known otherwise?

if you where at my house you would have experienced other forms of weirdness..the beatings, the rapes, the hunger etc...that i always assumes were normal.

it's what you grew up with...how could you or would you have known otherwise?

did i think it was trauma as a kid...no. i thought it was the same at my neighbor's home or the house next to theirs. my parents never allowed me to go to another kids house to visit so how would i have had any idea their upbringing was different?

so when i got to college it was a major culture shock...almost like landing in another country...wow....but like any good survivor..i learned to land on my feet & to think fast.

so yea it was traumatic but thankfully at the time i knew it was bad but didn't realize it was hell on earth. & even more so i came out of it ...in a better place mentally than my parents.

[rainbow8]

((((((((granite)))))))

I think what happened to you was traumatic but I understand that for you it seemed normal. By definition it was traumatic, though. It makes sense that you don't feel that way because you didn't know. Nothing that happened to you was your fault, especially for not knowing that others weren't treated the way you were. How should you know if you had nothing to compare it to?

I understand because I don't like when people say that what my brother did was abuse. I didn't like the game he wanted to play with me but I never thought of it as abuse.

As time goes on, I hope you will be able to discuss those events in your past with your T. Like people have told me, it doesn't matter what you label something; the goal is for you to be happier. That stuff did affect you and the mother is still affecting you today. You'd be able to talk, you wouldn't hate yourself, you wouldn't think your T hates you, if you weren't affected by your past. But, you are working on it!!! It's amazing how far you've come. You're such an inspiration to me and to many others on PC too.

[granite1]

Originally Posted by Butterflywingz

Hi Granite,

Usually what T's mean when they say something from childhood is traumatic, is the way in which things may have affected you unconsciously, and psychically. Although you may not have seen your experiences as traumatic when you were younger, the effects of having experienced such things stays with us deep within our minds, thus having an impact on us when we are older. This could be through behaviours, or through illnesses, or thought the way we may connect (or not) with others.

The mere fact that you mentioned dissociating, and that your T has mentioned it, could suggest that you are in fact more affected by things then you are consciously aware of. If that makes sense. As you get more involved with your therapy you will learn more about this, and more about you.

I hope this has given you an idea in what your T means. All the best

hi and thanks for your responce.welcome to PC.

i know the things that the mother did affect me it just doesnt feel like it is a huge trama.the things i see people deal with here every day are so much more tramatic and are so brave.

[granite1]

Originally Posted by Readytostop

Hi Granite.

I'm still feeling a little low today so hope what I say is helpful in some way. The example I'm going to use is in no way meant to be comparative to what you went through but to show I understand the thoughts...

When I was little we were very poor... I lived in a suburban community where most of my friends lived in a 3 bedroom split colonial in a housing development. They had nice clothes and a mom who stayed home and it was like the Brady Bunch... There were 6 kids in my family...we never had enough money for heat to be on very high so I slept in my coat in a sleeping bag... we never had enough food....we had a bad leak in the roof which we got fixed but then my dad gutted the room down to the studs to get rid of the damage but ran out of money before he could repair room...so we lived for the rest of my time at home with a gutted bedroom upstairs that no one lived in and my parents slept on sofas in living room...

When I was little that was normal...I didn't think we were poor that was just how we lived but then when I was like 10 or so and I started going to slumber parties and sleep overs... I realized that other people didn't live like that... and when I would talk about life at my home... it was the reactions that were difficult.... It was from their reactions that I felt shame... I never invited anyone over to my house...

trauma is defined as an experience that produces psychological injury or pain. I have dissociated amnesia from a lot of my childhood (lots more going on in that house than being poor) So did that experience of my childhood not cause trauma because I didn't remember it... Do we have to consciously interpret trauma as trauma in order for it to qualify as such? Or is the experience whether it was CSA or physical abuse qualify as trauma regardless of how interpretted by the victim? I think the latter is such...

But the shame was not yours and unfortunately your jr high friends did not have enough life experience to tell you that it wasn't you who was bad but the person who did that to you...

wow readt thanks for sharing some of your story.i am so sorry you had to live in such horrible conditions.
so are you saying that it truely is in how the person interpits the experiance?so if i don't look at it as tramatic is it helpful for my T to treat it as such.

[granite1]

Originally Posted by stumpy

no...it was normal for you...how would you have known otherwise?

if you where at my house you would have experienced other forms of weirdness..the beatings, the rapes, the hunger etc...that i always assumes were normal.

it's what you grew up with...how could you or would you have known otherwise?

did i think it was trauma as a kid...no. i thought it was the same at my neighbor's home or the house next to theirs. my parents never allowed me to go to another kids house to visit so how would i have had any idea their upbringing was different?

so when i got to college it was a major culture shock...almost like landing in another country...wow....but like any good survivor..i learned to land on my feet & to think fast.

so yea it was traumatic but thankfully at the time i knew it was bad but didn't realize it was hell on earth. & even more so i came out of it ...in a better place mentally than my parents.

thanks for sharing stumpy.what you must have gone through sounds awful.
that is exactally how i feel .like i didn't know it was wrong when i was younger.untill people told me it was wrong.i swear that is when things started falling appart.that is when i started getting messed up in the head i think

[granite1]

Originally Posted by rainbow8

((((((((granite)))))))

I think what happened to you was traumatic but I understand that for you it seemed normal. By definition it was traumatic, though. It makes sense that you don't feel that way because you didn't know. Nothing that happened to you was your fault, especially for not knowing that others weren't treated the way you were. How should you know if you had nothing to compare it to?

I understand because I don't like when people say that what my brother did was abuse. I didn't like the game he wanted to play with me but I never thought of it as abuse.

As time goes on, I hope you will be able to discuss those events in your past with your T. Like people have told me, it doesn't matter what you label something; the goal is for you to be happier. That stuff did affect you and the mother is still affecting you today. You'd be able to talk, you wouldn't hate yourself, you wouldn't think your T hates you, if you weren't affected by your past. But, you are working on it!!! It's amazing how far you've come. You're such an inspiration to me and to many others on PC too.

i so hope that i will also.i am trying.she wants me to tell her when i am so angry and feel like she hates me but it is hard to hear what she has to say about it.

i know you have a hard time thinking what your brother did was abuse.i guess i feel the same way sometimes about what happened to me and seeing it as tramatic.it's just gross thats all.some day i hope i will be able to talk about it

Of course it was traumatic ... Otherwise we wouldn't be here ... But, trauma and traumatic don't have to be dirty words ... I like to think of them as stepping stones that are leading me away from that place and towards a healthier one.

Originally Posted by granite1

wow readt thanks for sharing some of your story.i am so sorry you had to live in such horrible conditions.
so are you saying that it truely is in how the person interpits the experiance?so if i don't look at it as tramatic is it helpful for my T to treat it as such.

Granite, that's my point. I didn't think they were horrible conditions... that was normal for me... I didn't know anyone lived any differently... until I was older... but you just said they were horrible conditions (and by my standards today they would be horrible) ....

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think a child or person has to say oh this is so traumatic at the time an event is going on for it to be traumatic... sometimes people are just in survival mode...you aren't looking at something and saying this is normal... you are just surviving at the time...

It is only when we are in a safe enough place emotionally, psychologically to process these events do we realize the trauma...if we realized and thought about how bad it was when we were going through it we would not have survived.

[geez]

Originally Posted by Readytostop

It is only when we are in a safe enough place emotionally, psychologically to process these events do we realize the trauma...if we realized and thought about how bad it was when we were going through it we would not have survived.

This is so true! I notice when I feel 'safe' is when things come up for me from the past. My body and mind aren't in survival mode so it feels 'safe' to look at everything because it's at a distance. But at the same time because I now know the difference of how things were compared to how they should have been it effects me in so many ways and fuels allot of fear for me in wanting to be the perfect protector of my children. I want my kids to be emotionally healthy and free from experiencing any kind of emotional abuse I suffered as a child.